Another general announcement: I get a lot more replies, messages and fanmail on here than I used to.  Sometimes it takes me a number of days to respond to some of it, if I do at all, which I don’t always do.

If my followers are anything like me (and I know some of them are), I imagine that upon sending a message and not getting a response, they immediately start worrying about possibilities like “I haven’t responded because I was offended by their message or thought it was stupid” or “I haven’t responded because I secretly dislike them.”

If this helps, let me note that I don’t think any of that has ever been the case.  I’m not saying it’s not conceivable, but I literally can’t remember a single time when I have delayed a response to a message for that sort of reason.  So at least if we use past evidence as a guide to the future, it’s very unlikely.

The most common reasons I don’t respond to something immediately are 1) “this seems like it would ideally get an ‘interesting’ reply, but I can’t think of anything interesting to say,” and 2) “responding to this would take some effort – thinking of what to say, and how to phrase it – and I’m procrastinating that effort, although I don’t in any way resent having received a message that required it.”  If I’m slow in replying to your messages, the reason is almost certainly one of those.

don’t trust your brain to tell you why it’s struggling

theunitofcaring:

I spent the last week in one hell of a brainslump, as some of you know because I’ve been whining about it constantly in private messages. I’ve been sleeping badly, accomplishing nothing, having waves of disassociation/body loathing, feeling constantly as if I’m rotting from the inside, and vaguely hoping I’d be hit by a truck.

Last night I figured out why.

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This is very true for me, and is a reason why when people say things like “I think every feeling should be treated as meaningful” it’s a sign that we won’t get along.  Sometimes my brain/feelings/whatever are just wrong, in predictable ways I can identify and respond to, and knowing that makes my life richer rather than poorer.

In the “if I can’t please everyone I am a failure” headspace

Like, every little thing I do is probably disdained by someone, some people probably think I’m pretentious for doing as much [thing] as I do and some people probably think I’m stupid for not doing more [thing] than I do, some people just hate people with, I dunno, my somewhat ill-fitting jeans or whatever, yadda yadda

Local man lacks ability to become perfectly and universally blameless and without sin

Not sure if it’s worth showering and leaving the house to take a 45-minute commute to attend this seminar talk given that I’ve got some brain screeching going on

Then again it might help?  I can never tell

It’s a morning of morbs here at Casa Nostalgebraist

Low-morbidity distractions welcome

Now that people are multiplying the “X culture” snowclone with wild abandon, can I suggest “respectability culture” as a possibly useful one?  In particular, it seems to retain the nugget of truth in complaints about “sneer culture,” without the parts I don’t agree with.

By “respectability culture” I mean the attitude that one’s opinions are partially justified by their cultural status, and the tendency to shame people who bring up opinions that go against a perceived consensus.  “Everyone knows that’s wrong,” “why would even bring up something so dumb?”, “that’s such a fringe opinion,” “what are you, some kind of crackpot?”  That sort of thing.

The problem with this behavior is not that “respectable” opinions are totally unreliable (if anything, they are probably more likely to be right than non-”respectable” ones), but because it creates an atmosphere where it’s difficult for anyone to remember why they adopted the respectable opinions to begin with.  Anyone who says “wait, remind me again why I’m supposed to think this” is shamed, and as a result, even if the opinions are correct, people forget why they’re correct.

Ideally, I think it’s good to understand the justification for your worldview, even for its “obvious” elements.  It’s good to know why you believe even things as “obvious” as “the earth is round” or “the earth revolves around the sun.”  And, a fortiori, it’s good to remember the justifications for less obvious things.

I personally have a certain emotional investment in avoiding respectability culture, because I tend to get hung up on worrying about cases where I can’t figure out why everyone else believes something I don’t (or which I don’t feel certain about).  Environments where I can just ask (politely) for a justification are much better for my mental well-being.

This is part of what Yudkowksy complains about when he talks about “sneer culture” – he doesn’t like it when people just say “your opinions are fringe opinions” and leave it at that.  Which is perfectly reasonable.  But the concept of “sneer culture” conflates this problem with the whole phenomenon of mockery and deflating use of humor, when the two aren’t the same.  You can combine serious (non-respectability-based) criticism with deflating humor; many people do.  Likewise, appeals to respectability don’t necessarily involve “sneering” (often they are most naturally accompanied by a tone of grave seriousness).  Mocking humor is neither necessary nor sufficient for appeals to respectability, and the two should be distinguished.

Almost done reading Narbonic but I probably shouldn’t read it while I’ve got the morbs because it’s hard to enjoy morbid comedy in this mental state

Like as if her adorable comic about mad scientists weren’t already fridge-horrifying enough, Shaenon Garrity had to go from depicting “mad scientists” in a cliched, generalized way to depicting the kind of “madness” that creates mad scientists as a specific, awful-looking mental illness, thus implying in retrospect that several of the main characters have been in this awful mental state for the entire duration of the comic

She and Andrew Hussie should have a morbidity-off sometime

I’ve got the morbs today

It seems I must now may pay for two days of good mood with a day of bad mood.  So it goes, I guess.